Low back pain (LBP) is one of the musculoskeletal disorders that most affects workers. Among others, one of the working categories which mainly experiences such disease are video terminal workers. As it causes exploitation of the National Health Service and absenteeism in workplaces, LBP constitutes a relevant socio-economic burden. In such a scenario, a prompt detection of wrong seating postures can be useful to prevent the occurrence of this disorder. To date, many tools capable of monitoring the spinal range of motions (ROMs) are marketed, but most of them are unusable in working environments due to their bulkiness, discomfort and invasiveness. In the last decades, fiber optic sensors have made their mark allowing the creation of light and compact wearable systems. In this study, a novel wearable device embedding a Fiber Bragg Grating sensor for the detection of lumbar flexion-extensions (F/E) in seated subjects is proposed. At first, the manufacturing process of the sensing element was shown together with its mechanical characterization, that shows linear response to strain with a high correlation coefficient (R2 > 0.99) and a sensitivity value (Sε) of 0.20 nm∙mε-1. Then, the capability of the wearable device in measuring F/E in the sagittal body plane was experimentally assessed on a small population of volunteers, using a Motion Capture system (MoCap) as gold standard showing good ability of the system to match the lumbar F/E trend in time. Additionally, the lumbar ROMs were evaluated in terms of intervertebral lumbar distances (Δ d L 3 - L 1 ) and angles, exhibiting moderate to good agreement with the MoCap outputs (the maximum Mean Absolute Error obtained is ~16% in detecting Δ d L 3 - L 1 ). The proposed wearable device is the first attempt for the development of FBG-based wearable systems for workers' safety monitoring.
Keywords: Fiber Bragg Grating sensors; low back pain; occupational safety; video terminal workers; wearable devices.